cathedrals
by thessalies
Summary: "Maybe I'm not Ariadne. Maybe I'm Daedalus."


Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at works/236950.

* * *

The bishop makes no noise when she places it on the cafe table, just a soft textured feeling in her fingers as the felt slides along the glass. She tilts it with her index finger, applying the gentlest pressure she can manage, slowly, slowly. She stops when she reaches that middle point, that carefully measured moment when gravity could go either way. She imagines an equation, numbers sliding like the chess piece, up and down, up and down. It's not the way she usually likes to think about things, but it's simple and elegant and she rather likes it.

The waiter brings her another coffee, and she looks into his nondescript face. The bishop falls. She smiles.

"Of course Theseus and the Minotaur was my favorite story when I was a kid. I thought it was about me. Clever Ariadne helps Theseus escape the maze. But I always hated the ending. Theseus sleeps with her and then just abandons her on this random island? I mean, what a jerk, right? She should have stayed in the maze."

Arthur doesn't look up from the whiteboard. "That's not the point of a maze. A maze is just something to get through to arrive at the center."

"Maybe I'm not really Ariadne at all," she muses, not quite listening. "Maybe I'm Daedalus."

The marker protests in Arthur's hand, connecting levels, calculating times. Ariadne closes her eyes and sees miles upon miles of faded red string.

* * *

Back when Ariadne could still dream, she sometimes dreamt of having sex in cathedrals. The ceilings were always much higher than they should have been, sometimes with buttresses, sometimes with Byzantine domes and arches, light spearing down through stained-glass windows in a multitude of psychedelic colors. In the center of all that vastness she would tangle with another body, hot and wild, she would kiss red lips, slide across smooth legs, hair spraying fine and delicate across the cool tiles of the floor.

After the first time they did inception, she worried, or maybe hoped, she'd dream of Mal. By then, however, it was too late. She spent a week of second-level dreamtime designing flying buttresses but when her structures were complete she would go inside and stare upward and still be utterly alone.

* * *

"Ideas are infectious," Cobb says. He's looking at her sideways, across his wine glass, and speaking so quietly she almost can't hear him over the bustle of Paris at lunchtime. Ariadne pushes the bishop over. Thunk, the soft sound of polished wood against tablecloth.

"This is still about Mal," she says, almost not a guess, and she can tell by his expression that she's right. "You're afraid your idea might have spread to me." The bishop is rocking on its side. Ariadne rolls it with the pads of her fingers. "You're pathetic, you know that? You don't know how to live without guilt."

"Ariadne-" Cobb is still so quiet it's hard for her to tell if he's pleading or not. "Even I've had my moments of doubt, it's a horribly convincing thought-"

"Don't worry," Ariadne says, irritated. That low, soft voice is somehow grating on her nerves. "What if I thought this wasn't real. So what? Why should I want to find a real world, when I can create my own magnificent ones?"

He looks like he's still worrying. Ariadne sighs. She puts the bishop back in her pocket, and flashes a nervous grin at the waiter. He's looking at her like she's something that doesn't belong.

* * *

This building is based off one she saw in San Francisco once. They'd gone there, the team sans Cobb, after the first inception, to celebrate. It had been dinner. Seafood. As they'd driven back to the airport afterward, Ariadne had stared fascinated at the little century-old apartments in shades of pink and green, wrought-iron balconies like icing on a cake. Then they'd disappeared from view as Yusuf pulled onto the Oakland Bay Bridge. Arthur and Eames had been very drunk, Ariadne remembers, and were singing about wearing flowers in their hair. She smiles now, and adds another floor, pulling the windows and gutters from the house in the countryside her family had vacationed in the summer she turned twelve.

Music in her ears. She frowns. It's nowhere near time yet-

The ladder beneath her gives way. She screams as she falls-

-and opens her eyes in the cafe, Cobb shaking her, face taught with anger. "Jesus Christ," she shouts, and pulls the IV from her wrist. "What is wrong with you?"

He lets go of her shoulders, sits down across from her. His eyes burn. She looks away. The waiter is here again. "Your bill, mademoiselle."

"Pay it," Cobb tells her tightly.

She digs in her pockets, pulls out some crumpled bills and signs, hurriedly.

"I'm not going to talk with you here," he mutters, then, "Hold on."

"To what?" she wants to yell, but the world is falling apart.

It hurts when she lands on the floor. "This is so unnecessary," she shouts when stars stop exploding behind her eyes. She rolls over. Yusuf is looking between her and Cobb, as though trying to decide who to sedate first.

"How long," Cobb demands, getting up. He picks up his chair, rights it. "How long were you under." When Ariadne doesn't answer, he turns to Yusuf. "How long was she under!"

"...fifteen minutes," Yusuf admits.

Cobb's eyes widen. "What the fuck, Ariadne?"

"I don't know why this is such a big deal to you," she says.

"Three months in the dream is a big deal," he replies. "You have a life, you know. A real one. You have studies. You have a family."

"I pass my tests fine," she says defensively, deflectively. "And I do all my work for you. It pays well enough I don't actually need to be in school anyway, you know that. What am I going to do with my degree? Design office blocks? Be a slave to the laws of physics?"

"It'll drive you mad," he whispers softly.

Well. So what?

* * *

The problem with being in absolute charge of your own perfect world is that you are always alone. Ariadne never thought she'd envy Dom Cobb, but sometimes she feels like her subconscious is desperately flat and boring. She sits on the roof of the cathedral and looks out on her palaces, her canals and cafes, and she calls to Mal with her mind. I want you, she silently screams. Isn't that what brings you? Being wanted?

"Here," Mal says, and Ariadne opens her eyes. Mal stands there, her low-cut black dress gently swirling in the wind. She's holding something out. It's a faded ball of rust-red string.

Ariadne takes it, hesitantly. "What's this for?"

"If you ever want to find the center of the maze."

Ariadne's mind is racing. "You mean reality? Dom, the team? Or... somewhere else?"

Mal walks to the edge. Ariadne scrambles to follow her. "You're leaving?"

"I'm not yours to call," Mal chides, but she turns and presses a kiss to Ariadne's forehead. "Don't wait for the train any longer," she whispers into Ariadne's ear, the warmth sending a shiver down Ariadne's spine. "It isn't worth it, when you don't have anyone to go with."

She leaps. Ariadne watches her fall, graceful, like a diver.

The string is rough in Ariadne's palms. She shifts it to one hand, digs in her pocket with the other. The bishop is still smooth to her touch. She places it on the edge, flicks it with just the right amount of pressure.

It tips, disappears into the abyss. Of course it does. This is her dream, after all, and she knows how the bishop is balanced. Still, it's a reassurance of a sort. This is her dream, not someone else's, and inside her own dreams, Ariadne can do anything.


End file.
